 If you stick a straight pin into your finger and than pull it out, you will bleed temporarily, but the wound will heal with a band aid. If you leave the pin in your finger and cover it with a band-aid, it will become infected and not heal properly. The pin, in this example, is clearly the problem, not the minor wound. This analogy is one I use often when I give a talk about spending. If you’re in debt and come into a financial windfall or just consolidate the debt using your homes equity, the problem appears to be taken care of. In most cases the real problem is why you spent more than you earn in the first place which landed you into debt. If this problem is not analyzed at its core, then your financial windfall has only solved your problem temporarily. You may have left the straight pin in and put the band-aid over it.
To get to the root of the problem and fix it for good, don’t hope for a financial windfall or a home equity loan. Instead take a good look at why you went into debt in the first place. The biggest obstacle keeping you from living a life without credit card debt is what you define as your real needs and more importantly, why? Being needy usually requires we the use of credit cards. If a person deems that they need exclusive items such as clothing, cars or jewelry to maintain an acceptable self image or needs to dine at certain upscale establishments to enhance their image to themselves and their peers, then in most cases a budget needs to be pushed beyond what a normal pay-check can handle.
There is no denying that we are a culture that love’s to buy “stuff”. Just say it out loud. Say the word “stuff”. Take me to the mall so I can buy some stuff. Take me to BestBuy® so I can buy even more stuff. Whether your “stuff” is clothing, shoes, cars, fine dining or the latest in electronic gadgetry, we all love it. It always makes us feel good to reward ourselves with a new item.
You may notice however, that after a short time, most material items loose the excitement they originally came with. The reason is because these “things” don’t really provide lasting happiness. One of my favorite quotes is: “I try to find myself in things but never can, and I end up losing myself in them”. Things only make our egos happy. And your ego is not really who you really are but oftentimes, the ego makes all the decisions. If you want to quickly recognize the difference between you and your ego, take this quick test. Imagine something you bought or ate that made you feel really good at the time but you knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. For some, it may be a desert you ate or an expensive piece of clothing or jewelry you bought. Whatever it is, imagine that day. The ego pulled the strings and sold the item to you by convincing you that you deserved it. That mysterious guilt that was aware that it wasn’t the right thing to do was your conscious, or what I’d consider to be the true you. With that in mind, you should know that at any given time, there are two entities inside of you. Your ego, which provides thoughts, both spoken and unspoken, and your conscious, which does many other things, but for the sake of this article, lets just say it’s an inner gauge that points to right or wrong.
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